Tuxpaint: A paint program for kids

Tuxpaint is a paint program (not only) for children that is
absolutely great and fun!

A few weeks ago I was looking for software for kids in the
internet and so by chance I found Tuxpaint which looked
interesting. When you install it you can choose between several
languages so that there is also a big chance that your and your
kid' mother tongue is among the available languages which is
important for software for children. The installation went
quick and without problems. So soon I was ready to play around
and once started I found I could hardly stop again. :)
Even though it is rather simple when you compare it with
graphical programs like The Gimp it is full of interesting and
easy to grasp features!
Simply click on the Paint button and start drawing. You can
choose between many different brushes and colours. If you want
to draw a line you press the lines button and a click on the
shapes button lets you choose between many different shapes.
You can even rotate and scale your shapes before they appear on
your drawing board.
For text you click the ABC text button, choose your colour and
font and here you go. The text appears in a box and can be
moved with the mouse until you confirm it with "enter".
"Print" let's you print out the picture.

In case you didn't like what you painted you have several undo
steps and redoing something also is possible. You can erase
part or all of your drawing or if you want to start with a
clean sheet you simply press the "new" button.
To save your picture click the "save" button and to open an
existing picture you click "open" and Tuxpaint shows you
thumbnail images of your saved pictures.
The pictures are saved as png files in the directory
.tuxpaint/saved so you can copy them to another directory
before your daughter or son changes her/his great painting of
an elephant into dracula again.
All this already sounds great, doesn't it? But the real cool
features are the stamp and the magic buttons!
A click on the magic button and you can paint in rainbow
colours, you can add sparkles to your pictures, give your
picture a special note with the chalk option, you can blur your
picture and more!
Stamps are what in other drawing programs is called cliparts
and there really are a lot of images! Changing the colour let
them appear in this new colour and you can also change the size
as well as flip them! I really was impressed by the variety of
stamps that come with Tuxpaint!
To add your own stamps with (or without) sound you need a
small png file and add it in one of the subdirectories
under
whereyourtuxpaintisinstalled/share/tuxpaint/stamps/, e.g.
/usr/local/share/tuxpaint/stamps/misc/symbols/shapes/mypicture.png
Optionally you can save
/usr/local/share/tuxpaint/stamps/misc/symbols/shapes/mypicture.txt
to get some text displayed, e.g. This is my picture stamp. And
if you want sound for your stamp you also need a wav. file:
/usr/local/share/tuxpaint/stamps/misc/symbols/shapes/mypicture.wav.

Most button clicks are accompanied by sound that make the
painting even more fun! So far my favourites are the sound of
the rainbow button and the car racing sound of the checkered
flag. But decide for yourself!

I think that kids would love this program. At least I love it
as painting with it really is such a big fun! And I can not
only just mess around but even create nice looking greeting or
invitation cards!

It's time now to let you go so that you can explore Tuxpaint on
your own!

Thanks to the Newbreeds Software people who developed this
wonderful tool!!!
And to the rest of you I just want to say:
Happy Tuxpainting! :)